


A Mother's Worry

by conceptstage



Series: Single Chapter Critical Role [123]
Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-11
Updated: 2020-02-11
Packaged: 2021-02-28 06:21:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,414
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22669210
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/conceptstage/pseuds/conceptstage
Summary: Jester will always defend Beau. From her father, from monsters, from Beau herself sometimes, always. But she never expected to have to defend Beau to her own mother.
Relationships: Jester Lavorre/Beauregard Lionett
Series: Single Chapter Critical Role [123]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1436668
Comments: 5
Kudos: 296





	A Mother's Worry

Jester’s shoulders instantly relaxed as she stepped into the door of the Lavish Chateau. She sighed heavily and nearly fell back into Beau behind her. Beau chuckled and caught her and righted her back on her feet. 

“Glad to be home?” she asked, smirking.

“Glad to see my momma after so long.” She perked up when she saw Blud across the room and grinned, waving at him. “Blud!”

He glanced over and smiled softly, stepping around a patron and stepped up next to Jester. “It is good to see you well. Your mother worries. She had not taken a client this evening, would you like to see her now?”

Jester glanced back at others, a question in her eyes. 

Fjord cleared his throat. “We’ll get ourselves some rooms, you go on up. It’s late, we wouldn’t want to crowd your mother right now. We’ll say hi in the morning.”

Jester nodded at him but reached over to grab Beau’s wrist. “But you come up with me, yeah? Fjord, will you get us a room to share?”

Beau seemed surprised but nodded. “I- Sure, if you’re sure.”

Jester grinned and pulled Beau behind her up the stairs to her mother’s room. She knocked on the door and waited until it was gently pulled open and a young maid’s face appeared in the doorway. “Oh!” she exclaimed, slightly in surprise when she saw Jester on the other side. She pulled back and called over her shoulder. “Mistress! Your daughter is here to see you!”

“Let her in, let her in!” The maid opened the door and Jester hurried inside, pulling Beau with her still. Marion stood from her vanity chair, wearing just her silken robe, and smiled widely with perfect teeth. “My precious Sapphire!” She opened her arms wide and Jester dropped Beau’s wrist to run over and tackle her mother in a hug. The maid stepped out of the room to give them privacy and shut the door behind her.

“Oh Momma! I missed you so much!”

“It is so good to see you!”

Jester grinned and pulled out of her mother’s arms to reach for Beau. “And Beau! Beau’s here too!”

Marion looked up as Beau reached forward and took the hand that Jester was holding out for her, and frowned. She had schooled her expression by the time Jester spun back around to smile at her, but Beau had seen the dislike and distrust in her eyes. It wasn’t something that she was unfamiliar with, being disliked, but seeing it from a face that looked so much like Jester’s hurt a bit more than she expected.

“Beauregard. It is good to see you as well. Is the whole team here?”

Jester nodded, one hand holding Beau’s hand and the other hugged around her mother’s back. “Yeah, they were worried about crowding you so late at night, so they’re going to say hi in the morning.” She gasped and dropped Beau’s hand and her mother’s hug to start walking towards her old bedroom. “But I did want to pick up some of my old clothes while I was here.”

Beau’s eyes followed Jester as she moved about the room, shoveling clothes out of her dresser and armoire into her arms, but felt Marion’s scorn hot on the side of her face. “You need help?” she offered.

“Nope, I’m super strong, I’ve got it!”

Beau smiled fondly and shoved her hands into her pockets. Marion watched her carefully and then turned to her daughter with a smile plastered on her face. “Jester, darling, why don’t you do that in the morning? You can stay and talk with me for a while. I can braid your hair like I used to when you were younger.”

“Oh, I would love that. Beau, you can tell Momma about the Chained-”

“Actually, Jes,” Beau interrupted. “I think your mom would rather hang out with you alone. You know, catch up and everything.” She could tell when she wasn’t wanted.

Jester dropped the clothes in her arms unceremoniously on the floor and frowned at her. “Oh, are you sure?”

“Yeah, I’ll wait up for you in the room. You two should have a chance to talk.” She started towards the door but paused one moment to turn to meet Marion’s hard eyes. “See you, Jes.” Then she shut the door behind her.

She heard Jester’s voice yell “Bye Beau!” through the heavy wood but even Jester’s enthusiasm couldn’t lift her spirit. She scowled at the floor and marched down the stairs, looking for one of her friends in the main room. She spotted Caleb first, sitting at the bar and nursing a small drink, and marched over to take the seat at his side.

“Marion hates me,” she sneered, taking his drink and downing it in one gulp.

Caleb blinked in surprise and looked down at where his mug used to be. “You owe me a drink,” he muttered. 

Beau rolled her eyes. “I’ll buy you a whole fucking keg, man, just listen to me. Marion hates me.”

“Why?”

“Since when do people need a reason to hate me? Maybe I smiled at her once and it freaked her out, who the fuck knows?”

Caleb frowned and crossed his arms over his chest. “You do have kind of a sinister smile.”

“I know right? It gives people the wrong idea about me, I’ve been working on it.” She sighed and waved to get the bartender's attention. She held up the cup she’d stolen and then held up two fingers and the man nodded in understanding. She turned back to Caleb and bit her lip. “I’m not usually bothered when people don’t like me because fuck them, right? They don’t fucking know me. But this is Jester’s mom…”

Caleb hummed thoughtfully. “And you are in love with Jester, so it must be hard.”

Beau sputtered and hurried to deny it. “I-I’m not in love with her, what- What are you-” The skeptical look he gave her stopped her in her tracks and her face felt hot. She sighed and covered her eyes. “Is it that obvious?”

“No, not at all.” Caleb paused when the bartender brought them their drinks and waited until they were alone again to continue. He cleared his throat and took a sip. “Nott told me.”

Beau sneered and started looking around the room for Nott’s illusion. “That little- I told her in confidence! I should have fucking known better.” She downed her mug and tossed a few silver onto the bar. “Have another one on me. I’m ready for this fucking day to be over.”

Jester hummed happily as her mother braided gently through her hair. There was a warm breeze coming off the coast through the window so she didn’t even feel chilly in her nightgown. “So,” her mother started now that they were alone. “There was something that I wanted to talk to you about, My Sapphire.”

Jester resisted the urge to look back over her shoulder at her and instead just let her continue the first braid. “Anything, Momma,” she said.

“It’s about that roommate of yours, Beauregard.”

Jester got excited at the mention of her very best friend, she sat up straight and grinned. “Yeah, Beau. What about her though?”

Marion hummed thoughtfully. “Her attraction to you was fairly obvious when you last visited me but now it has clearly grown and she will probably act on it before much longer. You should be prepared, Darling.”

The words didn’t quite register in Jester’s mind right away and she was certain that she had misheard. “Huh?” she asked.

Marion’s fingers paused in her braid. “Oh, darling, have you not noticed yet?” she laughed melodically. “Oh, if she were any more obvious she’d be wearing a sign saying ‘I love Jester Lavorre’ around town.”

Emotions started to swirl in Jester’s chest and she gasped. “In love? With me?! Wh-What? How do you know, tell me everything, Momma, did she tell you? Did she say?”

Marion chuckled and kissed her daughter’s head as she finished off the first braid with a purple ribbon. “She did not have to tell me. It was clear on her face. Her eyes followed you around the room like a sunflower follows the sun and when you touched her hand she melted where she was standing.” She sighed. “She’s utterly smitten. I think I will almost feel sad for her when you reject her.”

Jester was almost too focused on the fact that her mother was telling her that Beau,  _ BEAU _ , was in love with her to notice the end of her sentence. “Wait, what? Why in the whole wide world would I reject Beau?”

Her mother had started separating the rest of Jester’s hair into three for a second braid, but she paused. “Well, of course you’re going to reject her.”

Jester turned sharply, ripping her hair out of her mother’s gentle grip. “What do you mean? What’s wrong with her?”

Marion seemed surprised by Jester’s intensity and blinked in surprise. “You know, Darling, she’s… undisciplined. Brash and uncouth, unwilling to bend. She will never be satisfied with staying put. She’s young, it’s possible that she could change at some point but you would not want to rely on that.”

“Beau doesn't need to change, I don’t want her to! She is not like that at all, Momma, you don’t know her at all! There is nothing at all wrong with Beau, she’s the very best, she’s amazing!” Jester argued, speaking so quickly that she could hardly breathe. “What are you, what are you even talking about? You don’t even know her at all, Momma!”

Marion frowned at her, understanding dawning in her eyes. “Oh, dear. You’ve fallen for her. Oh, Darling, must it be her? Why not Fjord? Or Yasha, she seems like such a nice young lady.”

“Beau is a nice young lady too! Momma, she’s the very best person that I’ve ever known and you can’t talk about her that way!” She had never yelled at her mother like this.

Marion sighed. “She’s only going to break your heart, My Sapphire.”

“You fell in love with someone that people said that about too!” Jester argued, pushing herself up to her feet. Her mother's face got dark at the mention of The Gentleman. “You fell in love with him and your momma told you that if you got married to him you wouldn’t be welcome home and you loved him anyway!”

“And he  _ left _ !” Marion snapped, her voice rising at the end. 

Jester had never seen her mother like this, so… raw, so unrefined. There was hurt and rage in her eyes, not aimed at Jester, just at the world. Had this been inside her mother all this time? This pain? “Momma…”

Marion looked away sharply and took a deep breath in through her nose and held it for a moment to calm herself. “He left me. He left  _ us _ . That girl is so much like your father… the way they stand, the way they speak, the way they smirk-” she cut herself off and shook her head. “The way they  _ lie _ ,” she hissed the word like water on a hot stove. “I just don’t want you to get hurt. When I met her it was like looking into the past and that’s when I knew that she was going to be trouble.”

Jester frowned and shook her head vigorously. “Momma, she is nothing like my father. She’s better, she’s so much better.” Marion didn’t respond or meet her daughter’s eyes. “Momma… are you saying that if I pick Beau that I can't come home?”

Marion’s eyes snapped up to meet hers so quickly that Jester was worried her mother might hurt her neck and she stood off the bed to tower over her daughter and then pulled her into a hug. “Oh, I would never, my Darling. Never. You are my precious daughter and my home will always be your home.” Marion sighed and pressed her cheek against the top of her daughter’s head. “Oh, my sweet Sapphire. I am just so worried that you will make the same mistake that I did.”

“Trusting Beau is not a mistake,” Jester whispered. “It is the best thing that I have ever done. They are nothing alike, Momma. She is better than him and I am not you. If Beau left I would go with her. Anywhere in the entire world.” Marion’s breath stuttered against her head and Jester knew that she was holding back a sob. “Momma… do you think that you could give Beau a chance? For me? Just talk to her, really talk to her without everyone else there, you’ll see how great she is and then you’ll like her so much, I know it!”

Marion kissed the top of her head. “I will try, my darling. I will try.”

She went back to the room that she shared with Beau and found her doing push ups in the middle of the floor with a book open on the ground below her head, reading it as she worked out.

Beau glanced up at her and grinned widely. “There you are. Why is only half your hair braided?”

Jester brushed her fingers through the part of her hair that was laying over her shoulder. “Momma got distracted halfway through.”

“A client?” Beau asked, pushing herself up onto her knees and picking up her book. “I thought she had the night off?”

“No, not a client. We started talking about my father and…”

Beau tossed the book onto her bed and sat beside it, raising an eyebrow at her. “ _ And  _ what?”

“And nothing!” Jester said hurriedly.

Beau seemed content to let the subject drop and folded her legs under her to sit on them. “Want me to finish it for you?”

Jester grinned. “Would you?”

“Course. Here, come sit.” She scooted back so that there was enough room in front of her for Jester to sit and Jester took the seat gratefully, tossing her hair back behind her ear. Jester sighed happily as Beau started separating her loose hair into three.

“Beau?” she started, kicking her legs idly off the side of the bed. Beau just hummed to let Jester know that she was listening. “Thank you.”

“It’s just hair, Jes, it’s no problem.”

“Not just that. Just… everything.”

Jester could hear a smile in Beau’s voice. “That’s no problem either, Jes. I’ve got you.”

“Yeah. I know.”


End file.
